I agree with much of what Kevin Drum has to say about the notion that the economy is being held back by a mysterious increase in “uncertainty.”

But a deeper lancing of this particular boil starts with the observation that it’s totally unclear what’s supposed to make this different from the standard Keynesian diagnosis. Indeed, Keynes himself put uncertainty front and center in his diagnosis of the business cycle and more modern “Keynesian” accounts tend to leave it out because it’s (a) hard to model and (b) not clear what difference it makes (see Brian Weatherson, “Keynes, Uncertainty, and Interest Rates” [PDF]).

Policymakers can’t make it cease to be the case that the future is uncertain. Policymakers can observe, however, that if economic actors’ level of uncertainty about the future increases that would manifest itself as an increased demand for money. Increased demand for money is a funny beast. Normally if demand for one kind of good or service falls, demand for other goods or services has to rise. But if what people demand is money itself then we find ourselves mired in a general glut, a shortfall of aggregate demand. Which is to say you’d be in just the normal Keynesian situation and you’d want to get out of it in just the normal Keynesian way—looser monetary and fiscal policy to bolster aggregate demand, soak up the excess capacity, and return us to a low-idleness equilibrium.

So if for whatever reason businessmen or politicians or media figures or anyone else feels more comfortable expressing the situation as one caused by “uncertainty” that’s fine. But the name of the game is still fiscal and monetary expansion. But instead the proposed cure typically seems to be “shift public policy in a more rightwing direction.” That wouldn’t do anything about uncertainty or a shortfall in aggregate demand. It’s just a faux-sophisticated way of saying “I’m a rich businessman who wants politicians to cater to my interests more.”

Tim Pawlenty’s got a Union Leader op-ed that I guess is supposed to illustrate his resumé as a Presidential contender. But amidst all the fulminations, we get to the point that anytime people decide to stop playing stupid political stunts and start talking about real issues, the differences in our politics narrow considerably:

For example, when it came to state employees and their health care, we gave individuals more freedom and responsibility to decide how to spend their own money. What does that mean? To reverse the trend of soaring health care costs in Minnesota, we gave our state employees financial incentives to select high-quality, low-cost health care. With some of their own skin in the game, the vast majority of employees chose more efficient providers. As a result, over the last five years we’ve seen low, and in some years no, premium increases.

Contrast that with President Obama’s approach to health care reform. It drags health care into Washington, D.C., expanding bureaucracy, mandates, entitlements and government subsidies. It does nothing to control costs. And once again, the government will serve up the allure of endless consumption and a magically disappearing bill. But we know nothing is truly free.

Now in fact that Affordable Care Act does a lot of different things. One thing it does, however, is impose a tax on unusually expensive health care plans. It also indexes the threshold for what counts as a very expensive plan to the overall rate of inflation, meaning that over time a larger and larger share of plans will be subject to the tax. What’s the impact of that? Well it creates financial incentives, over time, for employees to select lower cost health plans that put more of their own skin in the game. That’s Barack Obama’s main idea about how you can lower the rate of growth of health care costs, and it’s also Tim Pawlenty’s idea.

That’s not to say no important disagreements exist in politics. When Obama put this idea forward, he got significant pushback from labor unions and the ACA wound up including a version of the tax that’s much scaled back from the initial proposal. And Pawlenty’s version of this idea thrusts the entire burden of adjustment onto employees of the Minnesota state government, letting the general class of “people who have very fancy health plans because they’re rich” escape unscathed. Insurance companies and health care providers call health care costs “income” and they don’t want to see it reduced and they argue, not entirely unreasonably, that high health care profits drive innovation.

So there’s plenty to disagree about here. And the sooner the country starts having a real discussion about those real points of interest instead of the fake discussion about a made-up version of the Obama administration’s proposals, the better off we’ll be.

The view that American politics merely represents politicians bowing to the will of big money is unpopular among political scientists, to a degree that I find somewhat surprising. Thomas Ferguson, however, is an exception to this trend and he leans all the way in the other direction:

People who were hailing Obama as a new FDR were viewing American politics through the wrong lens. They were treating public policy as the result of the will of voters. But in fact, American political parties are mostly bank accounts. What you are told is the voice of the people is usually the sound of money talking.

Much of my research has been devoted to showing how both parties are dominated by blocs of large investors. The policy choices political parties present to the public on Social Security, macroeconomic policy, campaign finance reform, and indeed nearly every other policy area save a handful of hot-button “social issues” are basically dominated by big money. The consequences are disastrous: Neither party can level with the American people in crises. They cannot diagnose problems like the financial crisis with any honesty and they can’t make any detailed case for why the policies they do sponsor would actually benefit ordinary Americans. What we get instead are pseudo-explanations, myths, and sometimes, obvious mendacity. Political discussions in the media, where they are not distorted by the plain interests of the concerns themselves, are dominated by denizens of the “think tank” and “policy institute” world. Most of these institutions are heavily driven by, surprise, surprise, big money in the form of donors.

I think these conclusions are more plausibly reached through something more like Marx’s account of ideology or Lindblom’s “Privileged Position of Business in Polyarchy.” Political and media elites crave the esteem of business elites over and above their desire for their money.

In the absence of a climate change bill, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead with its Clean Air Act mandate to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions. But what, exactly, is happening. Dave Roberts checks in with a detailed post. Lots of action, but as he says “Climate hawks shouldn’t expect much from these upcoming regulations. They won’t be a substitute for the climate bill. Not even close.”

The fundamental problem is that unless we’re planning on not using any electricity in the future, we need to actually replace dirty power plants with clean ones and the EPA can’t conjure up solar panels. You need congress.